The Million Dollar Voice
Study shows male CEOs with a deeper voice make $187,000 more.
Deeper Voiced CEOs
In 2013, three professors set out to answer one question: ”Do male CEOs with a deeper voice make more than those with higher pitch voice?”
Their study, the first of its kind to assess the impact of vocal pitch on executive earnings, analyzed speech samples from hundreds of CEOs from the top publicly traded companies.1 The results surprised them. The data showed that the CEOs with lower voices tended to:
Manage larger companies, and in turn made more money.
A 22.1 Hertz decrease in pitch led to $187,000 higher annual compensation.
The same decrease in pitch also led to longer tenure by 151 days.
The results were in part because male CEOs with a lower pitch tend to lead larger corporations. But the results also reinforced a similar study that concluded that both male and female “voters” in a mock election tended to elect the candidate with the lower pitch voice—regardless of their gender.2
The main point is this: your voice pitch matters. In some cases, it’s the difference between nearly $200k annual salary, keeping your job for half a year longer, or winning the presidency.
Since the study concluded that 22.1 Hz led to gains in salary and tenure, I asked Chat GPT to explain—practically—what 22.1 Hz really was. The difference is similar to that of playing a C# vs. playing a D on the alto saxophone. Because I played alto sax (badly) in middle school, and I can tell you that that’s a small difference.
Practice Makes Permanent
As a sales professional—and just a person always looking to constantly improve—this study gave me pause for thought. I always knew that your presentation of self can have a tremendous impact on how you are perceived. But I never anticipated how much that difference would be—financially.
My Defensive Line coach at Brown used to tell us, “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent.” As such, it made me think about all the ways that I can practice and potentially improve my personal presentation of self in ways that are simple—and will inevitably trickle into how I present myself professionally, both at my company, and when I interface with clients and prospects.
In just the last week, this is what I could’ve done differently.
Instead of walking into the gym with my hood on and AirPods blaring music, I could have been more social by saying “hi” to the gym employees.
Rather than grabbing my orange chicken sample and darting for the dairy section, I could’ve made eye contact with, and perhaps even struck up a conversation with the Costco worker.
Food For Thought
Some final food for thought for both you and myself is this. In what ways is our body language moving us toward or away from our goals? What step can we take today to align our presentation of self to our goals?
— Grant Varner
https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/duke-fuqua-insights/ceo-million-dollar-voice#:~:text=Results%20showed%20CEOs%20with%20lower,compensation%20of%20%24187%2C000%20a%20year.
https://today.duke.edu/2012/03/andersonvote